by Molly K. Painter

On the back of every Texas A&M University Libraries’ employee’s name badge is the mantra —

Everything Safe and Secure.

Everyone Matters.

Everything Speaks.

Everything Done Well.

Little did employees of the Libraries know how this mantra would come into play when they were tasked with the feat of moving more than 2,300 electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) into the Libraries’ catalog in January.

The Libraries first snapped into action after being contacted by Laura Hammons, director of the Texas A&M University Thesis Office, when she presented them with several hurdles she was looking to conquer. A backlog of theses and dissertations, amassing more than 2,300, had been in a holding pattern for longer than she liked, and the public was demanding access.

The dilemma could be contributed to multiple factors, according to Hammons — along with the expected records from those recently graduated, some older records had been on hold for various reasons, like a period of embargo or patent holds, and were being released; there was no protocol in place to harvest the records into the Libraries’ online repository, where they were to live; the records were in a format not recognized by the Libraries’ online catalog (Voyager), which also prevented the records from being viewable by WorldCat, the largest database of library holdings in the world; and to top it all off, the Libraries’ staff didn’t have access to the files.

“We knew it was important to help Laura get these ETDs out there for the world to view,” Holly Mercer, head of Digital Services and Scholarly Communication, said. “Theses and dissertations are important for individuals and the communities that foster their research. Students need access for showing to potential employers, graduate schools or even just showing their family members. And we need a record of all the research that’s going on at Texas A&M, so the repository is a positive reflection of the academic programs and research of the University, and most importantly, it’s an accurate and trusted source.”

Mercer and her group along with Michael Bolton, director of Digital Initiatives, and his group first worked with Hammons to discuss the needs and the process. From there, programmers wrote code to convert the files to a format suitable for publishing in the repository and to automate the manual publishing process. This process also generated data essential for cataloging each ETD.

The actual publishing process took hours as thousands of documents, along with supporting metadata, were registered in the DSpace repository. For each document, a basic cataloging record was produced. Once these catalog records were in the hands of Jeannette Ho, coordinator of Cataloging, she discovered some data from the repository had not been converted correctly for use in the online catalog. With the help of Anne Highsmith, head of Consortia Systems, they went through several attempts at refining the records. Throughout the process, Digital Initiatives found ways to improve the data. Together, they succeeded at minimizing the need for individual catalogers to manually correct the records, enabling them to catalog the ETDs faster.

After lengthy trial and error procedures to correct errors in the data, the files were well on their way to being properly formatted MARC records. Once this hurdle was cleared, they landed in the lap of the Catalog Record Support unit, where Wyoma vanDuinkerken, coordinator, and Jennifer Greene, library associate II copy cataloger, took over the reins. In April, vanDuinkerken dedicated most of the copy cataloging team to the request, and after five days, they had cataloged the more than 2,300 ETDs, snapping the last piece of the puzzle in place.

“The way the different units of the Libraries banded together in collaboration with each other and our office was amazing,” Hammons said. “It was a real convergence of people, and it is a testimony to the fact that they truly want to see our program succeed as much as we do.

“My philosophy of what we’re here to do has changed since our relationship with the Libraries. They were our knights on white horses, saving the day. At first, I didn’t know where our support would come from, but now I absolutely know where to turn.”

What might appear to some as a mere conversion of data or transferring of static files, vonDuinkerken of the Libraries sees as an impact on the people involved and how it affects the lives of those who authored the ETDs.

“We did it because, ‘Everyone Matters,’ ” she said as she pointed to the back of her name badge.